CRL - Community Rail Lancashire

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Burscough Junction Grant Success

Community Rail Lancashire has learned that it has been successful in a bid to the Designated Community Rail Development Fund for a project at Burscough Junction station.

The project will see the West of Lancashire CRP Working with St John’s RC Primary School, Burscough, and a primary school in Erkrath, Germany, and will celebrate the differences and similarities of the two areas through language, art and photography.

Erkrath is twinned with West Lancashire; through the twinning association, and the project will undertake an exchang of letters (via email) in both English and German by the children in the top classes of both schools, detailing their local area, how they relate to it, European similarities, differences and unity; all illustrated with art and photographs (as appropriate). St John’s, Burscough, will also undertake CRL’s rail use and safety ‘Passengers of the Future’ programme, travelling to Preston to generate art and language for use in the project, as well as to learn about rail travel.

These letters, photographs and pieces of artwork will be made into two identical art pieces, one for display at Burscough Junction and one for use either within the school in Erkrath or potentially at the local rail station (communications with Deutsche Bahn are ongoing). The artwork will celebrate not only the local area of Burscough, but also the twinned relationship with Erkrath, and promote European similarities and differences as perceived by the young people, giving them a unique opportunity to explore and learn about a different culture in a socially meaningful context.

The Lancashire Probation service has agreed to clear the disused platform at Burscough Junction, where the art will be displayed, and we will also purchase additional flower tubs for the young people to plant; following maintenance will be undertaken by the Friends of Burscough Stations.

All of this will revitalise what is currently an overgrown and unused platform, brightening and reinvigorating the station, and will complete the Preston to Ormskirk line as a route where all stations have a community rail/friends group project/work on display.

The Designated Community Rail Development Fund (DCRDF) is a joint venture between the Department for Transport (DfT) and the Association of Community Rail Partnerships (ACoRP) and supports projects on community rail lines designated through the Government’s Community Rail Strategy.